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Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2015 10:31:54 -0700
From: Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Ghost vulnerability
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On 02/03/2015 04:19 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> Anssi Saari wrote:
> 
>> Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> How many people (actually machines) out here are vulnerable?
>>>
>>>
> http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/80210/ghost-bug-is-there-a-simple-way-to-test-if-my-system-is-secure
>>>
>>> shows a python 1-liner to check
>>
>> Does that check actually work for anyone? That code didn't segfalt on my
>> vulnerable Debian system but it did on my router which isn't (since the
>> router doesn't use glibc). Oh and of course I can't comment on
>> stinkexchange since I don't have whatever mana points they require...
> 
> Here's the one-liner:
> 
> python -c 'import socket;y="0"*50000000;socket.gethostbyname(y)'
> 
> 
> I think it is likely that y="0"*50000000 would segfault due to lack of
> memory on many machines. I wouldn't trust this as a test.

I ran it on both my servers (each running a different version of the OS)
which were recently updated to Red Hat's latest version of glibc that
fixes the problem, and both of them segfault with this one liner.